


The Advantages of a Kilt

by spinsterclaire



Series: For Imagine Claire and Jamie [17]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Book 4: Drums of Autumn, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 04:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12975921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsterclaire/pseuds/spinsterclaire
Summary: Prompt: I don't know if you have watched 3x09 yet. But in one of the scenes we see a flash of a Fraser kilt and I was wondering could you do a prompt where Jamie wears it again for the first time again? And maybe have a bit where he gives Claire her own piece to wear. Thanks in advance.





	The Advantages of a Kilt

We’d been one month in North Carolina, and had spent most of it trying to determine where we stood among the locals. Our temporary homestead, located within a day’s ride of Salem, had seen a steady stream of visitors since our arrival. Whether they were new or longtime residents, the majority had given us a sincere—if not slightly awed—welcome upon hearing “MacDubh” had come to the Colonies. 

To my pleasant surprise, any fears of any being ostracized (I’d been a stranger in a strange land far too many times) were unfounded. Rather, the company of so many Scotsmen made our home feel as any home should: Warm, inviting, and most of all, safe.

I could sense that Jamie felt it too. While Scotland would always be a part of him, thriving in the very marrow of his bones, he conversed with our new neighbors like lifelong friends. And justly so: For the first time since 1741, he wasn’t pursued by men, or worse, by old ghosts. His comfort had even extended to his clothing—a progression I was more than happy to see. He hadn’t worn a kilt in since my return—such garments being outlawed after the Rising—but now that we were safely across the Atlantic, and far from the Red Coats who hunted him, Jamie had dug out his Fraser tartan.

Just yesterday I had seen him out in the fields, making arrangements for the fall harvest in his red and green kilt. The sight of it, alone, had made me pause at the laundry lines, if only to appreciate the confident way he carried himself.  

Confidence had always come naturally to him, of course, but it had increased without the shadow of persecution. And this first sight of him, wearing his kilt, only convinced me further that we were here to stay. I’d sighed, happy at the thought of permanence and hoping it would last.

Presently, I was grinding herbs inside our small cabin. Jamie, clad in that same kilt and a pair of eyeglasses, was reading a letter from Jenny. His leg was propped up on the lower spindle of a stool, right knee bared to the shafts of waning sunlight. For all women’s talk of abs and biceps, I thought a man’s knees were  _vastly_  underrated. I said as much.

“Knees?” Jamie replied. “Well, if that’s all it takes…” He repositioned himself on stool so that his knee was closer to me, more exposed. I spotted a small scar there—a silken white line that stretched from the top of the cap to the bottom—and wondered where he’d gotten it.

Though I’d been reunited with Jamie for over a year, I was still taken aback by these reminders of our separation. The decades we’d spent apart occasionally reared their heads, announcing themselves in the different cadences of Jamie’s speech or, in this case, the marks of his body. A familiar sadness pulled at me—a regret for every change I had not been able to witness, cherish, or mourn.

I turned back to my work, wanting to distract myself from these gaps in my knowledge of Jamie’s life. But still—even I could not ignore that damn knee.

“So what d’ye think, Sassenach?” he asked then. “Perhaps it’s no’ as pretty as it once was, but it’s still a fine knee.”

“Very fine indeed,” I said, still grinding away with my stone pestle. Feigning nonchalance, I asked, “Does this mean the kilt has been reinstated into your wardrobe?”

“Aye, if the lady desires it.”

I studied him, and tilted my head in mock consideration, as if such a thing had never crossed my mind.

“Mmm. I suppose she does.”

“Good,” he replied. “Much more comfortable than trousers, kilts.”

“They certainly have their advantages,” I said, purposely avoiding his eyes. 

“And what might those be, Sassenach?”

I didn’t have to look up to see the expression on his face. How the slight curve of his lips would indicate he knew full well what advantages I meant—and all the ways in which he’d put them to good use.

I _did_ have to look up, however, to understand what the bloody hell he did next. Somehow, he’d already divested himself of his shirt and had tied it neatly across his chest, as though to staunch an invisible wound. His arm had grown suddenly stiff, and he held shoulder at an unnatural angle.

His knee, of course, remained fully exposed.

With a false grimace, he said, “Hurts bad enough, sitting still. I couldna manage a horse…”

I rolled my eyes.

“Oh,  _I_  see what you’re playing at, James Fraser.”

If it weren’t the smells wafting through the open window—so distinctly North Carolinian—I might have believed we were back in Scotland. I could almost envision the two of us during our first meeting in 1743: He, a 23-year old Highlander injured from a raid. I, a 20th century outlander stranded in a different century. The both of us brought together by the whims of chance or—if one believed in such things—by fate.

“My shoulder’s dislocated, Mistress,” he said, doing his best to sound young and gravely wounded. “I canna move my arm.”

I smiled, kneeling down beside him, and left a trail of kisses from his shoulder across his collarbone. His laughter, a rumble far deeper than it had once been, vibrated against my lips as he gasped and exclaimed, “It doesna hurt anymore!”

“It will,” I recited dutifully. But even so, Jamie seemed to notice a deficiency in my performance. After his eyes appraised my figure, clad in a homely woolen gown, one of his brows raised with a suggestive, “Hmm…”

I understood his meaning immediately.

“Jamie,” I said, looking towards the door. Duncan had been sent out to fetch firewood and would surely be back any minute. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m seriously injured, Sassenach,” he replied. “ And yer a nurse wi’ a fine touch—though if memory serves me, I dinna think yer meant to be dressed so respectably.”

I rolled my eyes, but with one final peek towards the still-empty doorway, I dressed down to my shift. If it wasn’t the exact outfit I’d worn on my first trip through the stones, it was at least something Mrs. Fitz would blanche at.

A breeze lifted the thin fabric, sending a chill down my spine as the wool pooled on the floor.

Apparently, the chill had made itself known elsewhere, for my husband was ogling my breasts with a glassy-eyed stare. I took a step forward and managed in the most authoritative voice I could, given the circumstances: “ _Not_ a wet nurse.”

“Aye,” Jamie mumbled, quickly falling back into his role. Still, he gored me with his eyes, fighting the grin that tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“You musn’t move the joint for two or three days,” I continued pointedly. The words came easily, like our encounter in that tiny cottage had happened only yesterday. “When you begin to use it again, go very slowly at first, and—”

“Slowly, is it?” Jamie said, the ‘injured’ arm reaching towards me. His hand inched its way beneath my shift, and upwards, to begin a torturous rhythm between my legs. “How’s that, Sassenach?” he asked eventually, and I could practically hear the smirk in his voice. “Slow enough for you?”

I moaned.

There may have been scars, wrinkles, and age spots Jamie and I had not been there to see, but a different kind of familiarity had remained unchanged over 20 years. In the span of a few minutes, I knew Jamie could still unravel me completely—and I reveled in the surety of his knowledge, and in my own surety that he had it.

Thoughts of Duncan completely forgotten, I urged his fingers to move faster.

“Faster? Yer breaking your rules, Sassenach,” Jamie  _tsked_ , getting to his feet as he continued to work against me. “If I did that, you’d punish me for it.”

In response, I dug my nails into the vulnerable skin of his back, while my other hand snaked under his kilt. I held him, then, in more ways than one—and this, too, we understood. 

More than willing to concede, Jamie allowed me to push him towards the table, both of us pawing at the clothes we still wore. My jars and notebooks were shoved aside, their clatter against the floorboards outmatching the noises we were making ourselves. Duncan, if he heard, would likely think a bear had invaded our home. At the moment, I couldn’t care less.

With Jamie now standing in front of me, and I sitting on the table, I wrapped my legs around his torso. Lips and tongues met in a hard and frenzied dance, and I broke away, breathless, to bite the lobe of his ear.

“I’ve half a mind to show you the advantages of a kilt,” I said, “Though as your nurse, I’m not sure it’d be professional.”

“Show me,” Jamie whispered, smiling into my neck. “I like it when ye break your rules.”


End file.
